


We cried ourselves a hurricane

by CharlotteDaBookworm



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Iris Amicitia, BAMF Nyx Ulric, Family Bonding, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Galahdian Culture, Gen, Magic, Magical Bonds, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Platonic Relationships, Protective Siblings, Reincarnation, Self-Insert, StormSpeaker AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 19:32:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16793356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlotteDaBookworm/pseuds/CharlotteDaBookworm
Summary: She feels it when Galahd falls.Iris sobs in the darkness of her room, feeling every light that is snuffed out violently - every single one of them crying out in pain as they're killed. And she can feel every single one of her people as they die, can feel their pain and anger and grief, and it hurts. Hurts like nothing ever has before, in either of her lives.Or that SI!Iris-as-Nyx's-cousin fic that I was talked into writing by tumblr





	We cried ourselves a hurricane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this fic is from Earth by Sleeping At Last, mostly because that's the song I listened to on repeat while writing this. Iris has been aged up to Noct's age in this because I said so, though she's still a couple of months younger than him. Gladio is still Noct's Shield.
> 
> I don't own FFXV

_Once, many years ago, the star of Eos was home to a great many of those who called themselves Astrals - beings of immense power who were tied to Eos' heart._

_Through time and war and strife and grief, these Astrals faded - one by one - until only six remained: Bahamut, the Draconian; Titan, the Archaean; Shiva, the Glacian; Ifrit, the Infernian; Leviathan, the Hydraean; and Ramuh, the Fulgurian._

_Over time these six - The Six, as they came to be known by the mortals who walked the skin of Eos - came to be worshipped as gods by the people who called their star home, and, in turn, many of them Chose to give those who they found_ worthy _their blessing._

_Bahamut, Draconian, Bladekeeper, God of War, who became the patron of the Line of Lucis, standing watch over the Lucis Caelum King's until the birth of the Chosen King, through the Crystal that harnessed his power. Titan, Archaean, Landforger, God of Earth, who stands guard over the people of Duscae, protecting them from the meteor that would mean their certain death._

_Shiva, Glacian, Frostbearer, Goddess of Ice, who intertwined herself with the Line of the Oracle, acting as her own messenger in order to guide their destinies to the fulfilment of the Prophecy. Ifrit, Infernian, Pyreburner, God of Fire, who once loved mortals with a desperate heart, only to fall victim to the fickleness of human veneration and turn against his siblings and, eventually, be sealed away._

_Leviathan, Hydraean, Tidemother, Goddess of the Seas, who is Mother to all of those who die in her domain and guards the boundaries of Eos, who brings death to all who defy her and protects Altissia with all of her might._

_Ramuh, Fulgurian, Stormsender, God of the Storm, who is a Grandfather to all of Galahd but Chooses two children each generation - two children with storms in their blood and lightning in their souls to defend the Isles until their last, who might once have been considered advisors to Kings but are now simply protectors of their home. The Stormsender calls his children, always, and the Stormcaller and Stormspeaker answer._

* * *

She feels it when Galahd falls.

Even from hundreds of miles away, separated from the home of her people by wide swaths of land and sea, in the dead of the night, she feels it.

It wakes her from her sleep, no more than a few hours past her bedtime, and for a moment her world _stills_ as the land **_screams_** in her mind as her King _(and she loves Uncle Regis, respects his abilities as a King, but he isn't_ hers _. Not like he is her father’s; not like he is Lucis'. Iris is Galahdian, is one of Ramuh's Chosen, is a_ Stormspeaker _, and the Lightning in her soul bows only to Galahd's King)_ is torn from this plane and then, a breath later, her Heir falls with her, and it takes all of Iris' self-control not to scream alongside the land even as something in her mind _opens_.

For a moment, she can't _breathe_ as the memories pour out of wherever they had hidden.

For a moment, all she can feel is the sharp, agonising pain of the blade in her chest and the damning cold. All she can see is the glint of light on the knife and her own blood staining her hands. And then, it's gone - shunted to the back of her head as she takes a hitching breath - and suddenly she can feel again.

She almost wishes that she can't.

Iris sobs in the darkness of her room, feeling every light that is snuffed out violently - every single one of them crying out in pain as they're killed. And she can _feel_ every single one of her people as they die, can feel their pain and anger and grief, and it _hurts_. Hurts like nothing ever has before, in either of her lives.

Even dying herself hadn't hurt like this.

Beneath her the land _screams_ at its loss, and above her Ramuh _rages_ in the sky as his people are ripped from his embrace one by one, and all she can feel is this horrible _emptiness_ where all of her people are meant to be as more and more of them die, and it hurts like she's there herself - and every instinct that she has is screaming that she _should_ be there, should be with her people, should be fighting with them, even if she's only seven and would be a hindrance instead of a help - instead of in her bedroom in Insomnia.

Iris curls into herself as, one by one, she feels her people fall from half a world away - stifling her cries into her bedsheets.

_(She feels it as her family dies._

_She feels it when Auntie Alya - who smiled like mum and was the best at hide-and-seek - falls to a blade, so like those that she favoured herself, surrounded by the bodies of her enemies. She feels it when Nana, who gave her strawberries whenever she saw her and told her stories of her mum at her age, is riddled with gunfire. She feels it when Uncle Helios and Uncle Orion and Auntie Illiana and Althea and Artemis and Stefanos are hit with a bomb. She feels it when Old Lady Melania - who taught Iris how to catch a rabbit, one of the wind-touched, so like and yet unlike her, who showed her how to_ feel _the world and push away the voices and listen to the currents and how to_ reach _, who understood her like no-one had before - drowns._

_She feels it when Nyx - blood-cousin, soul-brother, Stormcaller to her Stormspeaker, kin of her kin - screams out in_ grief _and_ rage _and_ pain _as Selena - her cousin Lena who laughed with her and let her play with her broadsword and took her swimming - falls as well._

_Iris feels them all die, one after another after another and so many more after that until they all blur into each other, so many that she loses count and she cries, and she cries, and she cries)_

Her people are dying, and Iris is one of Galahd's Children, but she can do _nothing,_ and she **_hates_** it with a ferocity that surprises even herself.

But Iris is a child and she is on the other side of the world and she can't _help_ , all she can do is _sob_ as her people die. All she can do is claw at her sheets and curl into a ball and try to ignore the _ache_ in her soul where all of her people had once lived.

The only consolation that she has is that she is certain that Nyx still lives. Her cousin is alive, she's sure of it - sure that she would have felt him die, even with the almost blinding onslaught of death, because Nyx is also Ramuh's Chosen, is connected to the land just like Iris is, and surely, she would _know_ if he was gone? Surely, she would have felt the bond between them shatter, like so many others had this night?

Nyx is alive, she has to believe it. She _has to._

She might have lost everyone else, might have lost her home, a home that she has only visited the one, but she hasn't lost her cousin. Nyx is alive. He's hurting and grieving and a bit broken - like they all will be, after tonight, she knows that deep in her bones - but he's alive. He has to be.

_(_ of course, he's alive, _her new memories scoff,_ Nyx Ulric dies at 32, _they whisper to her before Iris shoves them - and the image that they brought with them, of Nyx, her cousin, broken and scarred and shattering into ashes in this very city - away)_

It's a cold comfort in the dead of night, with her mind a white noise of _death_ and _loss_ , and it doesn't make any of this hurt any less, but she clings to it anyway. It’s a cold comfort but comfort all the same.

It still doesn't stop the tears.

And that is how her parents find her.

Curled into a shaking ball in the centre of her bed, arm wrapped tightly around the coeurl teddy that her aunt had given her when she'd visited as she sobs silently into its fur. The only sounds that she makes are great, heaving gasps between sobs - her body desperately trying to get enough air but unable to stop crying.

They have no idea what's happening, not yet. They can't feel the massacre that is taking place on Galahd's shores at this very moment, can't understand why their daughter is sobbing in her bed like her whole world has been ripped away, but they are still her _parents,_ and Iris leans into her father's side when he sits next to her, taking comfort in the hand that her mother runs along her back even as she cries herself into an exhausted sleep.

In the morning, they'll know.

In the morning, her father will rush into work and her mother will look at her solemnly and realise just what this night had meant. In the morning, Iris will have to look her mother in the eye even though she knows that most of their family is dead, even though she _knows_ how they died as though she was there herself. But, at the moment, they are just her parents, and they do not know, and she can take comfort in that.

Iris Amicitia cries herself to sleep in her parents' arms even as, on the other side of Eos, Galahd falls.

_(One day, years later, Iris will count them all._

_She will count every single soul who died that day, every soul that she failed on the day that Niflheim had invaded Galahd, and she will carry that number in her heart for the rest of her life. And she will look her cousin in the eye, and she will know that he has counted them too)_

* * *

_When Iris is six-years-old, her mother takes her home._

_Well, she doesn't know it at the time. She just thinks that she's going to meet her mum's family for the first time. Her mother had just smiled at her, a glint in her eyes, whenever Iris peppered her with questions about where they were going and why Gladdy and Daddy weren't coming and what Galahd was like and why did they have to take a boat? So, she just thinks that she's going to visit the extended family who she's never met but has heard so much about and it feels a bit like a consolation holiday, really - because her brother is busy training to be Nocts' Shield and her dad has to work with Uncle Reggie._

_At least, it feels like that until she steps foot onto the Isles._

_Because the way that her blood_ _sings in her veins and the Land_ ripples _playfully beneath her feet and the winds enthusiastically dance around her and the storms welcome her home could never be a consolation prize._

_Never._

_Iris Amicitia visits Galahd for the first time and Galahd welcomes her_ home.

* * *

She wakes to a pounding headache and a sore throat and her mother's hand running through her hair and she leans into the comfort, whining when the hand moves away and her mum laughs softly.

"Breakfast time, rainbow."

Groaning, she rolled over and buried her face in her mum's side without opening her eyes. She didn't want to get up, didn't want to have to face what had happened, didn't want to deal with everything, not yet.

Unfortunately, her mum was evil and uncompromising, even in the face of an all-night sobbing session.

"Up! Come on."

Iris groaned again as her mum opened the curtains, before pulling herself out of bed and opening her eyes and squinting as the light pierces her skull painfully. For a minute, she just looked at her mother - who was watching her patiently with the rough kindness that was her mother through and through - and bit her lip. Shaking her head slightly, she let herself be hustled down to the breakfast bar, pulling herself up onto a stool in silence despite her aching body and watching as her mum set a bowl of cereal down in front of her. It was Jared’s day off, she realised suddenly.

And she's not really hungry, feels sick to her stomach and looking at the food isn't helping honestly, but she doesn't push the bowl away, instead playing with the spoon as an excuse not to meet her mother's eyes.

_How did you tell someone that their family was dead?_

She doesn’t have the faintest idea, doesn’t even know how to start. “Dad?” She asks instead, despite being pretty sure of the answer, just to avoid the subject a little longer.

“Your father was called into work.” Her mum said, peering at her. "Iris." She pauses slightly, coming around to sit next to her before continuing. "How can I help?"

Not 'are you okay'. Not 'what happened'. Not 'are they alive'. Just 'how can I help'.

In that moment, Iris loves her mother more than anything in the world.

"They _died_ , mum. They all died." The words burst out of her hoarse throat painfully and she has to clench her fists and press her lips together to stop the rest of the words that want to spill out. _They died, and I should have been there. They died, and **I died,** and it hurts, and I don't know what to do._ Mum already knew what she is, had known before Iris had even, because she had grown up on the stories of Ramuh’s Chosen and had an idea of what it meant to be a Stormsender’s, but Iris still wasn't ready to tell her mum that _she'd died_.

Even though her mum already knew.

_(All Stormspeakers are reincarnated souls. Every single one of them - they were children who were born again at Ramuh's behest, bringers of change and hope, born not with the power to destroy but the power to listen._

_They have -_ had, _because Iris is the only one left, because her people have been_ slaughtered _and so much was lost - all lived twice. Iris has always known that, even before she_ understood _that, but that doesn't make it any less weird. It doesn't make remembering hurt any less._

_Iris has twenty-odd years of memories and a seven-year-old body and she_ hurts, _and she doesn't want to deal with any of this right now)_

An arm wraps around her shoulders, pulling her into a hug, and Iris sobs once before she regains control of herself with an iron fist. She looks up at her mother, at the dawning _grief_ in her eyes, and knows she doesn't need to say anything more. Knows that her mother understands what she means.

But she has never been a coward, not in either life. An idiot, certainly, not never a coward. Iris bites her lip, hesitating slightly, before continuing anyway. "Nyx is alive." She said quietly, still watching that horrible grief unfold in her mother's eyes at everything that Iris isn't saying. She doesn't ask questions, doesn't ask if Iris is sure, doesn't pull away from her daughter acting as a harbinger of death, just nods and accepts what she's saying as truth.

"What do you need?" Her mother asks instead and Iris, Iris hesitates.

_Nyx_ , she wants to say, because she wants her cousin, wants proof that she didn't lose them all last night, wants the one person alive who would understand how she feels right now. _For this to be a dream_ , is on the tip of her tongue, but that's childish and cruel and she has to face up to the truth. _Home_ , almost slips out, and her thoughts are on sandy beaches and untamed jungles and lightning storms and land that sings with joy as she walks, on a place that she has only visited briefly rather than on the city that she has grown up in.

She almost says so many things in that moment but, in the end, she doesn't.

_(They would all be like rubbing salt in the wound, would ask for something that her mother can't give to her, and Iris can't do that. She can't be that childish, can't be that_ cruel _\- because, for all that children can be cruel, Iris isn't really a child. Not anymore._

_Not after last night)_

Instead, Iris looks down at her mostly untouched bowl of cereal. "Can- can I stay home today?" She asks, hesitant, because while she really doesn't want to go to school with the dying screams of her people _(so many screams, and she can still hear them all. Can still hear every single one, echoing in an endless loop, a deafening cacophony of screams. Will it ever stop? Or will she be haunted by them for the rest of her life?)_ still echoing in her head, not to mention the horrible headache that she's currently ignoring in the hopes that it'll disappear, she's still an Amicitia and Amicitia are meant to be strong.

Her mother nods without hesitation though, and it's nearly enough to make her cry.

"Of course. Do you want Gladiolus to stay with you?" It goes unspoken that her mother couldn't, that she would have to go into work, and Iris understands why - understands _duty_. But she also knows that Gladdy is meant to be training today, has far more important things to do than to sit with her all day, and for her mum to offer?

"I love you. I love you _so much_ , mum." And the words rip themselves out of her desperately as she clings to the woman, the little voice in the back of her head refusing to let her mother go until she's certain that she knows that.

When she looks up, her mum has a small, sad smile on her face and so much love in her eyes. "I love you too. Your brother?"

"...please?"

Not being alone today sounds good, even if she feels bad about dragging Gladdy away from his training. Even if she should be better than this, even if she shouldn't be acting like a child when everyone else had better things to do.

But she just. She wants her big brother - wants to sit and read with him in the library and just pretend that the world didn't exist for today - and if her mum was offering...

Well, physically she’s young enough to get away with being selfish - just this once.

"Okay."

* * *

_When she first meets her cousin, Iris can't help but stare up at Nyx in awe._

_"Galahd_ loves _you." She says without thinking, only realising that she's spoken when her mother sighs behind her at her lack of manners._

_But it's_ true _. The magic of the land dances around him and the wind ripples in his clothes and whispers its devotion and everything she can see, everything she can feel, tells her that this teenager is beloved by Galahd itself._

_"Galahd loves all of its children." And she can feel the truth of his words in her bones but..._

_"It loves you more."_

_And Nyx grins in response to that, reaching out to ruffle her hair and laughing when she pouts. "And you, little rainbow._ _You are just as beloved as I am."_ _When she peers up at his questioning, he gestures. "Listen. Listen and watch and_ feel _."_

_Around them, the land_ sings _of joy and devotion and love and happiness and the magic and its chants of_ mineoursminechosenchildrenbelovedmine _are almost tangible. The wind dances and the clouds ripple and she can feel the love that surrounds her and the entire Isles, and she can see so much_ more _._

_"Wow." She breathes._

_Crouching beside her_ , _Nyx wraps an arm around her shoulders as they both watch something that only they know. "Welcome home, little Stormspeaker. Welcome home."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, this is SparkleMoose's fault.
> 
> I'll probably go in depth on what a StormSpeaker actually is in later chapters (...once I've figured it out myself) and I'll try to include at least a little meta at the start of each. No idea when the next chapter will be, sorry
> 
> Thanks for reading, tell me what you think.


End file.
